Was just thinking this. To add to my post above, that actually aligns pretty well with how I dress and dressed. 2-3 years ago my dress sense was a bit more rascal/varied and it was mostly the indies that would buy the more interesting stuff from brands like OL. These days I'm very monochrome, so naturally my buying habits align with the safer shops.

Like I said, catalog/products trump everything. So depends on the type of customer you want to attract. A lot of indies definitely have something unique about them and their buyers/owners come through. Shops that really stick out to me as unique are places like Goodhood, Peggs, Always In Colour, and Oi Polloi.

Appreciate this might be seen as an edge case but its an example none the less, the most successful/largest indy place in my old home town is a bricks and mortar place call Dr Kruger just pasted from their site (which is a trainwreck)

Basically anything with a big word or logo on it, you see trends of copying the logo ebb and flow over time. Westwood - agreed, stone island I feel is definitely nationwide, when I go home now i see tshirts with that multicoloured donkey on it whatever the fuck that is, before that it was gold lion, before that the Lyle and Scott eagle etc… either way its printing money for them.. you could probably slap these into google trends and you would see em spike over time in certain areas

What I would be interested to know is how the relationships are formed with the retailers and brands, and what factors come into play before someone will be able to stock a brand, e.g. Norse Projects' dealer criteria.

As an extreme, I heard that the guy from Alpha Shadows used a translator to open up the relationship with the brands they stock, as he wanted them to think he had enough respect to not just speak to them in English. Are some brands more relaxed on who they work with, compared with others?